


Little Sparrow Bones

by scioscribe



Category: Guardians of the Galaxy (Movies)
Genre: Breathplay, Choking, F/F, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-08
Updated: 2019-06-08
Packaged: 2020-04-08 09:48:02
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,176
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19104664
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scioscribe/pseuds/scioscribe
Summary: Gamora tries to help Nebula avoid yet another unwanted modification.





	Little Sparrow Bones

**Author's Note:**

  * For [thedevilchicken](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thedevilchicken/gifts).



> With thanks to my early beta reader, who improved upon this greatly.

The ball of her foot struck hard against Nebula’s back and Nebula pitched forward, gasping, but knew better than to fall: falling had been trained out of her long ago.  She used an awkward stagger to catch herself—it had no finesse, but it kept her upright—and spun around.  But Gamora could see her throat spasming uselessly; hear the wheeze of her breath.  She’d had the wind knocked out of her and it was slowing her down.

Gamora had already won, more or less.  She meant to leave it be.

She didn’t.  She caught Nebula’s own blow with her forearm—every block was just pain channeled elsewhere, so she already knew she’d pay for this continuance, she’d wear the bruises—and struck again and again.  She didn’t stop until she heard her father’s voice.  She never did.

“Enough.”  He beckoned them close.  “Nebula, why do you continue struggling in this way?  I’ve tried to shape you for perfection.”

“I know, Father.”

“Yet you gape and gasp for air like a fish pulled from the sea.  Is that your problem, Nebula?  Do you need more air, more—reaction of oxygen with muscle, more refinement?  Or do you need to become accustomed to less?”

How could they become accustomed to less?  They had nothing.

“I will be better,” Nebula said.  Gamora had split her lip and it was dripping blood in a soft, steady patter on the floor, as natural as rain.  “I won’t let it happen again, Father.”

“So you say,” their father said, but at least he sounded only bored now, only cynical.  The threat had passed, so far as Gamora could tell.  Her mother would have told her that the hawk had moved on its hunt, that its shadow had left the sparrows and rabbits behind.  Nebula would be left no more piecemeal than she was already.  Gamora almost rose to go, as though relief had loosened her hold on the floor, but thankfully she stopped within a hairsbreadth of movement as Thanos spoke again.  “And Gamora.  I’ll try to find you a worthier opponent.  I worry about your own training suffering—though I may have raised you beyond competition.”

The praise was for himself, not for her.  She had no right to feel pride at it.  She bowed her head.  “I’ll await your instructions, Father.”

“The two of you are dismissed.”

They passed out into the corridor.

Nebula said, “What will I lose next at your hands, Gamora?”

“A fight,” Gamora said.  “Probably.”

She couldn’t help seeing the purple-black seam of scar tissue on Nebula’s scalp where her latest modification had been plugged in: additional memory chips, networked.  Thanos had said perhaps it would help her learn, if anything would.  Gamora looked away from her.

Nebula said, “‘I’ll await your instructions, Father,’” in a bad imitation of Gamora.  She couldn’t pitch her own voice high enough, so it just came out sounding reedy.

“Instead of mocking me,” Gamora said, “why don’t you ask me to help you?”

“I’d rather die.”

“Maybe one day you will.”  She looked again at the scar.  “Maybe one day you’ll lose badly enough that he’ll cleave you in two searching for some improvement.  And he won’t bother to piece you back together again.”

“I’ve been cleaved in more pieces than two.”  Only silence then, and the steady hard tread of their boots against the floor.  “What do you suggest?”

 _Do not mock her, even if she makes it so hard to treat her well._ “We could practice together until you could function on less oxygen, or at least until having your breath go doesn’t throw you off balance.”

“Fine.”  Nebula’s voice was toneless.  “Do what you want.”

“What I want wouldn’t include helping you.  It’s better for me if you always fail.”

“Then do what I want.  For once.”  Nebula palmed a door panel and stepped through it, with no more discussion than that.

Gamora could have just kept walking.  She had no obligation here.  But she turned in too and slid the door closed behind her.

These were Nebula’s quarters, not a training room.  Thanos hadn’t been generous with her space.  Gamora at least had a meager closet, as shallow as a grave, and a small shelf she kept mostly bare.  A blanket that had a trace of color to it.  Nebula lacked even breathing room, to the point where Gamora didn’t even know that what they were about to practice was necessary.  Surely she was already used to having the air pressed out of her by this place.  There was a pallet here with a heap of clothing at its foot; beyond that, there was nothing but a small rectangle of barren floor-space.

It squeezed them close together, forcing the heat of Nebula’s body into Gamora’s orbit, forcing her to smell the acridity of Nebula’s sweat.  It was an intimacy she did not want.

“Hit me again,” Nebula said.  She straightened up, baring her stomach and diaphragm.

But there was hardly any room.  It went against Gamora’s instincts to fight in so cramped a spot.  It would be too easy to lose the upper hand.  She shook her head.  “I’ll choke you.”

Nebula looked at her.  “Fine.”

“You can’t do this to yourself,” Gamora said, like her purpose here, really, was to remind Nebula that Nebula needed her.  “Your hand would relax on your own when you started losing consciousness.”

“I could use a belt.”

“Maybe.  But then if you passed out, you’d die.”

“Then you’re here to save my life.  That’s so inspiring.”  She lifted her head.  “Do it already.”

Gamora put her hands around her sister’s throat.

It was strange—most of Nebula’s bones and cartilage had been replaced by now.  Thanos had threaded her through with high-tension steel, flexible and resistant.  Every bone Gamora had ever broken in her was gone, discarded into some bin.  But she’d never tried to snap Nebula’s neck, so the bones here were the ones Nebula had been born with.  Compared to the rest of her, they felt light and hollow, like Gamora was holding a bird in her hands.  She could feel the delicacy of Nebula’s hyoid bone.  It would be so easy to break it with just a little pressure from her thumbs.

She tightened her hold carefully, watching Nebula’s lips part as the compression hit her.

“You can still breathe,” Gamora said.  Her voice sounded calmer than she felt.  “I haven’t closed your larynx completely.  You can’t talk and you’re not at maximum efficiency, but you can still breathe.  Try to relax.”

There was fury in Nebula’s eyes, but her pulse slowed a little beneath Gamora’s fingers.

“Good,” Gamora said, and felt Nebula’s pulse quicken, a brief spike of reaction.  Contrariness?  She squeezed harder and felt Nebula drop back to something like a resting pulse rate, like the pain was less upsetting for her than the praise.  “Now you can’t breathe.  But you have a minute or two where that’s bearable.  Don’t waste the oxygen you have—don’t move more than you have to—but stay alert.  Look at me.  Now react.  Do something.”

Nebula grabbed Gamora’s arms.

Gamora released her.  “Good,” she said again, though without Nebula’s heartbeat to tell her, she didn’t know whether Nebula had that same flinch in response.  “You stayed calm.”

“Do it again,” Nebula said.  Her voice was raspier than ever.

“Give it a minute.”

“Why?  You don’t let me rest in a fight.”

“We’re not fighting,” Gamora snapped.  “I’m _helping_ you.”

Seconds ticked by.  She probably did take up her position again sooner than she should have, just because the silence between them was too heavy.  Something had changed.  It was so rare these days for her to touch Nebula without trying to hurt her—but of course she was hurting her now.  At least here the hurt was incidental, well-intentioned, requested.  It belonged to just the two of them.  This violence was almost a toy, and it had been years since they’d been allowed to play. 

She could feel the light sheen of sweat on her sister’s skin.  And in the fug of stale air and exertion there was a newer, muskier scent as well.

Gamora pressed down.  Sparrow bones.  Unscarred skin.

She was keeping this one bit of Nebula unmarked and unchanged.

When Nebula opened her mouth, searching for that little scraping of air, Gamora kissed her.

Nebula leaned closer to her, pressing her unprotected throat further into Gamora’s unyielding hands, sliding her tongue against Gamora’s, licking into Gamora’s mouth.  She tasted burnt and coppery and Gamora could feel her spasm as she tried to pull in air where there was none, as she tried to breathe in Gamora’s own breath.  Gamora slackened her grip but didn’t let go.  If she let go, she was dimly aware that this would stop.  They didn’t have any way to do this without hurting each other.

Gamora unlaced her breeches, keeping her hand on Nebula’s neck all the while.

“You have two hands,” she said, “and you can react.  React.”

Nebula shoved Gamora’s breeches and underwear down around her ankles, a muted, strangled growl escaping her, and then she turned her attention to herself, questing upwards, stroking her breast.  She was rough with herself, digging her fingers in.  A deflection, pain channeled elsewhere: another bruise.  Gamora kissed her again and gave her more air even as she took it away, sealed off Nebula’s mouth with her own.  She kicked off her boots and stepped out of her clothes, stripping off her shirt, alternating hands so she never entirely stopped touching Nebula.  She stood there bare against Nebula’s fully clothed body.  She let Nebula breathe—a little, a little.  Not enough for this to not still be part of the game.

Nebula’s lips were darker blue than before.  She said, “You’re desperate.  I win.”

Did she?

Gamora let her go then.  Nebula staggered backwards, more disoriented now than she had been in the fight.  She was wild-eyed.

_She hates you._

_She’s your sister._

Gamora overruled both voices.  _None of this matters,_ she told herself.  She grabbed Nebula by the shoulders and levered her down, taking some comfort in the way Nebula bent naturally to control her descent.  Gamora had taught her that too, more or less.  Nebula landed on her knees and buried her face between Gamora’s legs with no more prelude than that.

Smothering herself, probably.  More training.  Then Gamora would be useful: she pushed her hips out, letting Nebula’s tongue more readily slip between her folds and reach her cunt.

She was wet—if she had to, she’d trace the first pulse of arousal in all this all the way back to Nebula saying, _Then do what I want._ She had no grip against Nebula’s smooth-shaved skull, and it forced her to be unexpectedly, unwantedly—maybe—tender, sliding her fingers over it, caressing Nebula’s adamantine jaw and cheekbones as Nebula licked too roughly against her clit.

Gamora came then.  It was the most reaction Nebula had ever wrung from her and it made her shake.  Nebula looked up at her triumphantly, like this was her victory too.  Her mouth glistened in the low light.

“Come to bed,” Gamora said.  “I’ll do you.”

Nebula shook her head.  “I want you to kneel for me.”  The word were still hoarse and croaking.

“If we’re in bed I can reach your throat and your cunt at the same time.”

For a moment she thought Nebula would still choose to gloat over anything else, but after a moment of looking up at her, Nebula nodded and stood only enough to fall back into the pallet.  She undressed quickly and spread her legs.

Gamora looked at the picture Nebula made.  She felt loathing and need, so closely and inseparably together now that she didn’t know how to unwind them.  She lay between her sister’s legs and, licking two fingers, slid them against the heat of Nebula’s cunt.  She had done this before, but not often, and not with Nebula.  Not with anyone she knew.  She put her other hand on Nebula’s throat and tightened it as she pressed those slick fingers inside Nebula’s cunt: she felt both ends of Nebula flutter against her fingers.  This wasn't an indulgence.  This was a necessity, something to get them both to the next day.

“You can’t do anything,” Gamora whispered, fucking in and out of her.  “You don’t have the strength like this.  Just stay.  React.”

Nebula lifted her legs and closed them around Gamora, her heels against Gamora’s ass.  Gamora entered her more deeply, using three fingers now.  She leaned down to feel Nebula’s chest rise and fall against her own.  Their sweat mingled.

She tracked it—noticed whenever Nebula was too still for too long between even the shallowest of breaths.  That was what she thought of, as much or more than the sleek tightness of Nebula’s body around her fingers.  This was not fucking, just an exercise in keeping someone alive.  Gamora hadn’t known until now that she had any gift for that.


End file.
